More Choir Practice in an Echo Chamber by the Usual Suspects
We Need To Expand the Conversation About Space, OpEd, Space News
“But changing the conversation isn’t really enough, and that poll shows why a majority of Americans do not support returning to the moon or going to Mars, and just a little over 50 percent of them support increasing funding for human spaceflight. This tells us what our next project is we need to expand the conversation about space, not just change it. All of us who are part of the space community see space’s potential. But space is a niche issue for a very simple reason space isn’t relevant to the average person.”
Keith’s note: This op ed makes some astute and frank observations. But then it quickly goes on to utterly ignore these very same observations. In a nutshell this op ed about space activism openly admits that space activism has had little or no effect on space policy over the past three decades. Their solution? Have the same space activist organizations – and the exact same people (activists) – use the same tactics that they openly admit have been ineffective. Moreover they want to sell Congress and the taxpaying public a space policy that they know that people neither want – or understand.
– Yet Another Space Group: The Space Illuminati, earlier post
– Alliance for Space Development Revealed (Yawn), earlier post
– Recent Space Poll: The Public is Not Always in Synch With Space Advocates, earlier post
– Pioneering Space National Summit Details Emerge, earlier post
– Yet Another Plan For Outer Space, earlier post
He lost me at ‘conversation’ which has joined ‘reach out’ in the lower depths of corporate buzzspeak hell. I stopped reading at ‘Crown jewel’ in reference to the ISS.
If there were a simple answer we would have found it long ago. Space advocacy, like any attempt to change public policy that doesn’t include simply handing a legislator a fat check, is tough work. Don’t put down the people who try. Maybe it only helps in the margins, but it helps.
After 29 years in Washington working in and around the space sector, I can tell you that whatever impact space advocacy groups have on policy making it is fleeting and quickly forgotten. These groups, of course, would have you think otherwise. It is not that this isn’t a worthwhile effort, its just that the same old same old simply does not work. More of the same will result in more of the same i.e. no impact.
Without the Commercial Space Acts, and the move towards commercialization there really wasn’t a point it seems like ..
It appears that more and more commercial activities do not really require the advocacy on the government for movement…
I think kickstarter .. in the furture is going to be more important than an advocacy group.
Agree
Sooner work in space gets away from needing public support the better.
Given the current level of public sport for space exploration and space activities, I wouldn’t count on Kickstarter being a solution, let alone a sustainable solution.
This is how the transcontinental railroad was built and it is how the airline industry got started- with a bit of public support [albeit dramatically different in these two cases]. It is entirely appropriate.
Given the immense cost of space infrastructure, public help will be required for some time, but eventually it will become a source of wealth.
Some have said that public help/$ should be in very small projects short time frame.
What do you think these groups should be doing if same old doesn’t work?
Could you outline what you think they should do?
What significant impact has space advocacy had on our space program?
Exactly. These groups can never point to a specific accomplishment.
Defeating the Moon Treaty? As I recall, L-5 claimed credit for that.
Those would be some mighty expensive goals. But there is more wealth in space than a hundred copies of America or Europe or the world taken as a whole.
Do we have the $$$ to jump start this expansion? Of course we do. We also have the money to educate our citizens and to provide health care.
Regrettably, we squander our wealth on (among others) senseless foreign incursions with marginal threat while roads deteriorate, airports are appalling, and citizens die from lack of medicine.
On top of that, we live paycheck-to-paycheck, depending (partially) on borrowed funds.
Our primary problem isn’t wealth. It is leadership.
” … On top of that, we live paycheck-to-paycheck, depending (partially) on borrowed funds.
Our primary problem isn’t wealth. It is leadership.”
You have defined Obama perfectly, thank you. Greatest increase in national debt and deficit spending by any president and, in my opinion, the worst example of leadership, bar none.
OK. I know this is something like pissing up a rope, but here goes:
the American economy has been turned upside down over the past fifty years by the belief that low taxes equals more income [ask Kansas how that’s working out], and by the nonsensical attendance at the Church of the Free Market. And it was not Mr. Obama who started this mess, it was Mr. ‘The Government IS the Problem’ Reagan and his goofy supply-side madness doing whatever he could to destroy the faith of the American people in our government.
Now we have a country where the notion of a one income family isn’t even a dream anymore. It’s impossible- mom has to work. Where good jobs are damn hard to find. Where the middle class is slipping in the wrong direction. And where wealth has been stunningly concentrated into the hands of a few.
So don’t spout crap about ‘Because Obama’. He didn’t start these stupid wars and take payment off budget. He wasn’t president when Wall Street was eating the economy. He did what he could given the hand he was dealt by a series of free wheeling Republicans- who, as it looks now, are eager to get involved in another damn war.
Sheesh. I need another cup of coffee.
We’re just lucky that 90% of the American public doesn’t pay attention to the manned space program. If they knew we were planning to go to an asteroid next instead of the moon or Mars, there would be a huge public outcry to cut the funding altogether.